Payment Method Decision Matrix

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

(This is NA-centric, your mileage may vary)

1: Do you live outside of Japan, the US, the UK, and the Eurozone? (i.e. are you Canadian/Australian/Swedish/etc. ?)
YES: ClickandBuy's currency conversion rates suck, go to Question 4.
NO: Go to Question 2.

2: Do you want to have the exact amount you owe automatically billed to your credit/debit card?
YES: Set up a ClickandBuy account.
NO: Go to Question 3.

3: Are you morally opposed to setting up a ClickandBuy account?
YES: Go to Question 4.
NO: Go back to Question 2 and save yourself some hassle.

4: You will be using PlaySpan. Do you currently have a PayPal account?
YES: Use PayPal via PlaySpan
NO: Go to Question 5.

5: Are you morally opposed to setting up a PayPal account?
YES: Go to Statement 6.
NO: Go back to Question 3 and think harder about it this time.

6: Buy "Ultimate Game Card" prepaid cards at a local store.

EDIT: Disregard Question 1, as per latest from the community reps.

[Myrid]

1) no
2) yes, but I'm morally opposed to clickandbuy
3) yes
4) no
5) yes
6) this is not using my credit card automatically every month

I think I broke it.

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

yes, but

That's the thing about binary questions: there is no "but."

You have a value judgment to make. Which means more to you: not dealing with ClickandBuy, or the convenience of automatic billing?

I can't answer that for you. You have until the end of August to decide.

However, I would suggest sitting down and actually reading the policies you'd have to agree to with ClickandBuy, and the policies you've previously agreed to with Square-Enix. If one truly is "bad" while the other is "good," you should be able to pinpoint those differences in the policies. Otherwise you're just operating on pure nerdrage.

[RAIST]

lol.. "nerdrage"

There is an extra little gotcha' I don't think a lot of people have thought about with using C&B. It's injecting an extra point of failure/manipulation in the process to continue automatic billing on the credit card. If all goes well, no problem..but when something breaks down there may be considerably more finger-pointing:

for issues in the POL system, you looked at SE/POL, their CC processor, your financial institution as the processor was regionally based.

now with C&B, it's SE, C&B and their screwy policies, their CC processor, your financial institution and (possibly) their international transfer policies.

Just saying...there is more to be considered then the question of letting SE passing off my CC info to THEIR firm in CA to pay my bill through a US CC processor or using someone else to do the same thing. It's a question of passing my CC info off to another company in London that is going to pass it off to a CC processor in Europe to process my payment and then how will my bank respond to this foreign entity asking for money to pay a bill. For some, that endpoint response has been |Thanks for the offer, but I'll have to pass.|

Edit:
The more I think about it, if SE does extend direct pay to the rest of us, they may in fact opt to do it thorugh JCB if they can. This would still allow them to still script a lof of stuff locally and keep their transactions isolated locally.

Otherwise, they would need to setup the VPN's to the regional CC processors (hardware for stability), or otherwise do a tiered process where they slingshot their regional offices through their existing secure links and let them run the charges and sling it back to JP. The latter might inject a bit of a delay in the process they may not like.

If it all boils down to them making arrangements with JCB, we might wind up with some of the typical fees involved with international commerce (transaction fee or currency exchange rates/fees, etc.). But even so, it may be the lesser of the evils for some--especially those that cannot play at all because of what's happening.